“No to self-referentiality,” Pope Francis often insisted. Popes are not called to create their own magisterium ex nihilo, but to reinvest in that of their predecessors by offering new impulses.
Traditionally, each papal speech is structured around references to the immediate predecessor and other popes. These references can be explicit or implicit. For example, Francis’ homily at the funeral of Benedict XVI on January 5, 2023, was structured around quotations from the writings of Joseph Ratzinger, but he did not say so explicitly.
Continuing Francis’ theme for general audiences
Leo XIV has made numerous references to his predecessor and draws partly on his texts.
Since the resumption of general audiences on May 21, Leo XIV has resumed the cycle of catechesis begun by Francis as part of this Holy Year 2025, on the theme “Jesus Christ, our hope.”
The structure of these meditations is the same as under Francis’ pontificate: relatively short, simple, and vivid texts, drawing in particular on descriptions of works of art. In his first Wednesday catechesis on May 21, Leo XIV referred to Van Gogh’s painting, The Sower at Sunset.
A month earlier, on April 16, in his last catechesis, which was only published in writing because he was having difficulty speaking, Pope Francis also offered a form of artistic exegesis, this time on Rembrandt’s painting The Return of the Prodigal Son.
The similarity between these texts suggests that Leo XIV may have been following a plan already prepared by Francis and his entourage before his death.
Similarly, Benedict XVI began his general audiences in 2005 by drawing on meditations prepared by John Paul II on the Psalms and the canticles of Vespers.
For his part, in 1978, John Paul II took up the cycle of catechesis initiated by John Paul I on Christian virtues. The Polish pope also drew heavily on the legacy of Paul VI’s pontificate (1963-1978). The meditations for his first Way of the Cross on Good Friday at the Colosseum on April 13, 1979, were taken from the writings of Paul VI.
The poor and children: 2 themes to be revisited?
In terms of magisterial texts, at least two projects were in preparation before Pope Francis’ death. The drafting of a document on children had been announced by the Argentine pope himself on February 3 at the end of the international summit on the protection of children held at the Vatican. This occasion gave rise to one of his last speeches, 11 days before his hospitalization.
Flanked by Queen Rania of Jordan and former US Vice President Al Gore, Francis expressed his desire to make a structured commitment on this issue. In order to “provide continuity for this commitment and to promote it throughout the Church, I intend to prepare an apostolic Exhortation dedicated to children,” he announced, without giving a specific timetable.
Pope Francis’ other project — of which, according to our information, a first draft had been written — was an apostolic exhortation on the poor. It seems likely that the new pope will take up this project again, given Leo XIV‘s similar social sensitivity, forged in particular during his missionary experience in Peru.
What could have been a kind of “testament” from Pope Francis on this “preferential option for the poor” could thus become the programmatic text for the beginning of his pontificate. But Leo is under no obligation to do this, and is completely free to take up other themes.
An unusual “collaboration” between Francis and Benedict XVI
In 2013, the situation was unique. Francis found himself in a unique form of “coexistence” with his predecessor Benedict XVI.
The first encyclical of Francis’ pontificate, Lumen Fidei, published in July 2013 as part of the Year of Faith, had been largely prepared by the German pontiff. It was the continuation of his series on the theological virtues, after Spe Salvi and Caritas in Veritate. This text therefore appeared much more “Ratzingerian” than “Bergoglian.”
Francis’ first truly personal text came a few months later, in the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. In this document, the Argentine pontiff drew heavily on the experience of the Latin American bishops’ conference, of which he had been one of the driving forces six years earlier at the Aparecida meeting.
